Ramblings, stories and lies from the roads of life… And now from a side of a mountain…

Bastard Offspring of Greed…

“A credit score is a numerical expression based on a statistical analysis of a person’s credit files, to represent the creditworthiness of that person. A credit score is primarily based on credit report information typically sourced from credit bureaus.

Lenders, such as banks and credit card companies, use credit scores to evaluate the potential risk posed by lending money to consumers and to mitigate losses due to bad debt. Lenders use credit scores to determine who qualifies for a loan, at what interest rate, and what credit limits. Lenders also use credit scores to determine which customers are likely to bring in the most revenue. The use of credit or identity scoring prior to authorizing access or granting credit is an implementation of a trusted system. Credit scoring is not limited to banks. Other organizations, such as mobile phone companies, insurance companies, landlords, and government departments employ the same techniques. Credit scoring also has a lot of overlap with data mining, which uses many similar techniques”…wiki

So how does this score play into the recent financial crisis that was perpetrated by the greed of Wall Street and Mortgage Companies. Simple truth, it does not. In matters little that hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs and as many have lost their homes due to this manipulation of funds, greed and the lack of moral fiber of the Federal Government and powerful corporations. It does not matter that hard-working people who by no fault of their own have fallen through the cracks and now have low credit scores.

The definition of a credit score is a “means to garner higher profits from those who are in need of employment, a home and a means to rebuild their retirement”. Present philosophy…”Keep them poor”. In today’s failed economy, there are those who will insult you by stating that a low credit score destroys not only your dignity, but destroys your self-worth, your character and your reputation, but they fail to take into account that many good, hard-working individuals lost their means of employment and struggle daily just to make ends meet. These are the people who have never faced a financial crisis with their personal life and have no concept of the pain such a situation evokes.

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed or underemployed. One in nine families can’t make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street. Do your elected officials care? Hell, no. They continue to operate the government with an abandoned idea that your tax dollars are inexhaustible while we citizens have no other recourse than to do without.

This credit score monster needs to be modified in light of the recent and continuing fiasco of unmitigated greed and fiscal irresponsibility. Good people who are in genuine need should not be exploited by those whose services and goods that are required by either human need and capricious laws and policies.

“Through it all, families never asked for a handout from anyone, especially Washington. They were left to go on their own, working harder, squeezing nickels, and taking care of themselves. But their economic boats have been taking on water for years, and now the crisis has swamped millions of middle class families.

The contrast with the big banks could not be sharper. While the middle class has been caught in an economic vise, the financial industry that was supposed to serve them has prospered at their expense. Consumer banking — selling debt to middle class families — has been a gold mine. Boring banking has given way to creative banking, and the industry has generated tens of billions of dollars annually in fees made possible by deceptive and dangerous terms buried in the fine print of opaque, incomprehensible, and largely unregulated contracts.

And when various forms of this creative banking triggered economic crisis, the banks went to Washington for a handout. All the while, top executives kept their jobs and retained their bonuses. Even though the tax dollars that supported the bailout came largely from middle class families — from people already working hard to make ends meet — the beneficiaries of those tax dollars are now lobbying Congress to preserve the rules that had let those huge banks feast off the middle class“…Elizabeth Warren

..Filing for bankruptcy will seriously damage your credit score more than just about any other debt relief solution. While bankruptcy does ruin your credit rating it will also allow you to escape overwhelming debt.